Hello ladies, gents, etc.

I'm currently hoping to set up a campaign in the DH setting, but I'm sort of at a loss for which version of the rules to use. I'm really reluctant to commit any $ until I have a better understanding of the meaningful differences between the different versions. The fact that there's no clear consensus about which of the systems is best makes me particularly hesitant. Maybe some of you might be able to point me in the right direction, given my needs:

- Speedy Mechanics. I've always been of the school of thought that dice use should be minimized. Nothing ruins a game for me more than when a 30 second combat takes 30 minutes of actual game time. Total immersion breaker. The dice should be there to facilitate the basics of believably lethal combat, and no more.

- As much character creation and progression freedom as possible, without being unfaithful to the 40k setting.

I'm also open to any sort of house-rule/patch suggestions for any of the different versions.

Hope that's not too vague!

From what I've been able to tell, DH2 is the most streamlined I've seen of any base 40krpg. That isn't to say that the original beta doesn't have rules that fans made (patches) to make stuff work. Character creation is much more open, same relative amount of dice rolling though. DH1 is clunky...just so very clunky it's really not an option beyond all the source material that's already out for it.

If you want a more free-form character generation and development, look into DH2 . Personally, I haven't encountered a combat system in any game that doesn't take some time to complete. Mechanics always run faster the more familiar people are with the systems involved.

That there is no consensus on which system is best is demonstrative of the fan base being diverse in their tastes and interpretations of what works. Look at games like Dungeons & Dragons and Shadowrun which are both now on their Fifth editions. I know groups who prefer different editions over others.

Shoot me a PM and I might be able to provide more detailed information.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Ouch, if you want fast, plausible, realisticallly lethal combat, I'd actually recommend making your own combat system.

Where DH1 was reasonably deadly with the core book, later books eventually made it a powergamer's wet dream. Where DH2's first beta does "fast" right, the weapon value table is not good for lethality and where Only War...well, eh, only war's combat system is basically the same as DH1's, with some very minor tweaks and no fix for the core problems of the system if you want guns to be dangerous.

The aptitude system on character generation reads well, but tendentially plays poorly. If you want it to be convenient and fast, you're going to have to make handouts with XP costs on them for your players so it's all on one page. DH1 is much faster there, but less free. DH first beta requires more math, but is generally quick and easy once you know the formula.

That's about as concise as I can be. No system is entirely perfect, but out of the three options, I prefer a heavily modded DH2 first beta, because it is the fastest and most versatile of the three. It's also the closest to the other system we play, which is Unhallowed Metropolis.

DH2 is the safe bet. While imperfect, it's an improvement over DH1 , and it will be receiving new support material regularly.

The main thing to recommend DH1 is that there is a large amount of existing support material (but much of the later stuff is pretty 'broken'), and since there will never be any new DH1 stuff, it's 'self-contained'- you don't have to worry about a new supplement contradicting something that you establish during your campaign.

Beta1 had some good points, but it was fairly glitchy (there are a number of fan-made 'fixes' floating around the InterWebs), and combat is slooooow, since every wounding hit requires referencing a set of charts. Also, it doesn't include any setting info, so if you want an established setting you will have to look elsewhere. And of course there will never be any supplements for it, so if you want to expand, you will have to get supplements intended for other systems and shoe-horn them in as best you can...

Definitely go with DH2: WH40KRP is one of the few systems where the writers actually work on improvement with each passing sequel, so it has become MUCH better over the years. When it comes to dice rolling, you're never going to escape a degree of complexity and time consumption in this franchise: It's just sort of expected that combat is supposed to take a few minutes (specifically, the game appears to operate on the logic that combat is meant to be meaningful and that you shouldn't waste your time with chump encounters, therefore the battles that do exist are meant to be an activity in themselves).

When it comes to freedom in character creation, YOU NEED DARK HERESY 2!!! The first game suffered HARD from having very railroaded character progression and creation. In DH2, you can do pretty much whatever you want, and the "elite advances" allow you to become a psyker along with anything else. It also allows you to become an inquisitor much easier and without breaking the campaign. With that said, DH1 does benefit from age, so it has dozens of options in the form of expansion books. With a good degree of understanding of the rule systems, you can possibly convert DH1 books to DH2.

Oh, right, that. We fixed that. What we did was houserule as follows:

Premise1: Cover types have an armour value assigned to them, which is added to the character's armour in that zone. Punching through cover diminishes that armour value.

Premise2: We don't like rolling lots of dice. All 40k systems require us to roll an atrocious amount

Conclusion:

New default hit location for unaimed shots = highest armour value. Aimed shots get to pick their targets.

For every additional damage dice generated through degrees of success on target, the player may choose to forfeit said dice and do one of the following:

1. Add an additional point of armour penetration to the shot

2. Reduce the armour value of cover by an additional 1 point

3. Add +2 to the wounds table result for the hit.

Saves us a bunch of dice rolls, lets us destroy the environment in the process, rewards taking the time to aim/snipe and keeps combat very short and deadly . With a few tweaks it's applicable to the HP system as well.

I'm running a woundless hack at the moment inspired by the DH beta 1. It really does a lot for lethality and keeps the players trying to hug cover as much as possible. I included 4 new combat manouvres to aid with this, so far its working pretty well.

While the dice rolling for combat is still the same in both editions, the actual slow down of combat from the system comes from book keeping (this is where the beta 1 fell short with its status effect treatment of things like bleeding). Keeping gunfights lethal is a big way to change this, because people start dropping very quickly.

Premise1: Cover types have an armour value assigned to them, which is added to the character's armour in that zone. Punching through cover diminishes that armour value.

Premise2: We don't like rolling lots of dice. All 40k systems require us to roll an atrocious amount

Premise 1 - Cover rules already exist within the mechanics of both DH1 (page 199) and DH2 (page 229) and function exactly the way you describe.

Premise 2 - Without getting long winded, I am just going to have to disagree with you on this. The system is designed to actually minimize a lot of rolling compared to other games. Roll to hit, reverse the numbers to determine where you hit. Multiple rounds/swings land based on how successful the attack roll was and hit locations based off teh Multiple Hits table. Reaction rolls negate hits in a similar manner (this was not the case in DH1 , so is better in that regard). The big thing is rolling multiple damage rolls.

You really haven't rolled gobs of dice until you've played a game that necessitates owning one or more 36 count blocks of 6-sided dice, like the WHF or WH40K minis game (twin-linked Punisher Gatling cannons come to mine here), or something like World of Darkness (d10's admittedly) or Shadowrun .

I see the mechanics quite differently than you, but what matters is whether or not the players and GMs have fun. We make our adjustments as needed to achieve that ultimate of goals. Oh, and I do agree with increasing Pen, on most las-weapons anyway.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Part of my antipathy for rolling a bunch of dice stems from about a decade of Shadowrun(and I recall we increased weapon damage there, too...okay, I admit, that may be a habit ). Generally, the less we roll at the table, the better, and the better the house rule meshes with the existing rule (in this case, cover), the better. This is a tweak that makes combat, tendentially, a lot faster and a lot less dicey, leaving us with about an average of 10 minutes per combat encounter, depending on how long winded we want to get describing what we do. It's just one way to do it, though. I'm sure there's plenty of other ways to work DH2, DH1 and DH2beta1 into more swift systems.

...average of 10 minutes per combat encounter, depending on how long winded we want to get describing what we do.

Ten minutes sounds about right. I hate that feeling when an initially tense combat encounter devolves into dice rolling and page flipping between the GM/DM and one player, while everyone else kind of yawns and stares vacantly.

Part of my antipathy for rolling a bunch of dice stems from about a decade of Shadowrun(and I recall we increased weapon damage there, too...okay, I admit, that may be a habit ). Generally, the less we roll at the table, the better, and the better the house rule meshes with the existing rule (in this case, cover), the better. This is a tweak that makes combat, tendentially, a lot faster and a lot less dicey, leaving us with about an average of 10 minutes per combat encounter, depending on how long winded we want to get describing what we do. It's just one way to do it, though. I'm sure there's plenty of other ways to work DH2, DH1 and DH2beta1 into more swift systems.

I can see that. SR5 has fixed a lot of the "Nothing can hurt me" problems that seemed common in 4th, but increased the potential dice pools by expanding the skill ranks.

Familiarity and comfort with the rules helps a lot. Question, does your group have all their house rules documented somewhere they can all reference easily? I work up Word docs for all my variations that generally help my games that I can provide with the

-=Brother Praetus=-

We have the entire combat system on 1-2 pages in any system we run where it isn't all on one page in the book, which is, regrettably, most systems these days. When we played unhallowed metropolis, the GM screen that came with the book sufficed completely, for Dark Heresy/Black Crusade, we ended up making out own write-up because we house-ruled a lot in those systems.

One of my common house rules is simple:

"All las-weapons have their penetration values increased by one, provided the published penetration is not 5 or higher. Hot-shot charge packs further increase a las-weapon's penetration by +3."

Interestingly, another part of my changes to las-weapons was similar enough to the variable setting quality/rule/feature that I can just go with that now.

There are a few other rules I am considering adjusting, though for now I mostly run an unmodified game. However, I expect combats to take awhile, as most of my current group are completely new to any of the WH40K RPG s. They shall learn quickly, though.

-=Brother Praetus=-

If you want combat to go quickly (or more quickly), then I'd avoid the beta. Wow did combat take a long time in that version of the game.

BYE

Hello ladies, gents, etc.

I'm currently hoping to set up a campaign in the DH setting, but I'm sort of at a loss for which version of the rules to use. I'm really reluctant to commit any $ until I have a better understanding of the meaningful differences between the different versions. The fact that there's no clear consensus about which of the systems is best makes me particularly hesitant. Maybe some of you might be able to point me in the right direction, given my needs:

- Speedy Mechanics. I've always been of the school of thought that dice use should be minimized. Nothing ruins a game for me more than when a 30 second combat takes 30 minutes of actual game time. Total immersion breaker. The dice should be there to facilitate the basics of believably lethal combat, and no more.

- As much character creation and progression freedom as possible, without being unfaithful to the 40k setting.

I'm also open to any sort of house-rule/patch suggestions for any of the different versions.

Hope that's not too vague!

A lot of this will depend on your players, but all of the 40K rules, beta included, do not directly facilitate fast combat. You scrounge up a bunch of modifiers and penalties to choose from, roll on attack adding everything up, calculate degrees of success, maybe roll a dodge or parry, roll damage, possibly roll righteous fury damage, add special weapon powers, calculate against armor and toughness, possibly roll on critical hit tables, and so on. The game also still has a pretty strong base chance of shots failing to no effect, meaning maybe 1/3 of those rolls resulting in "nothing happens". The game also has rules for ranges and exact meter movements but doesn't really have them balanced out for actually using a grid, so there's more complication there. Combat is not going to ever be very fast and vicious unless you and your players are on the ball with all the numbers and don't roleplay anything going on in favor of just trying to quickly resolve rolls and attacks. So basically, if you consider something like third edition d&d combat to be fast and fun, this is a decent (though less varied) approximation.

If fast combat is a really big concern for you, maybe googling for a Savage Worlds conversion of dark heresy/40k would be more what you're looking for? That game has its own issues, but combat is designed to run very quickly.

For character creation, DH2 or the beta both have very loose creation systems. The aptitude system used causes some weird problems, particularly with character progression from experience, but it's a definite improvement over the old dark heresy.